Official Gazette, Issue 24 App. (a) on 14 June 2012 21 text of Articles (1, 26, 27, 31, 32, 35, 38 and 39) of the aforementioned Constitutional Declaration. The ruling of this court has decided that the outcome of the principle of equality before the law – reiterated by all the Egyptian constitutions and emphasized by Article (7) of the Constitutional Declaration which considers it to be an essential support of all different rights and freedoms and the basis of justice and social peace – is the safeguarding of rights and freedoms in the face of the forms of discrimination which arise therefrom or restrict the practice thereof, since it is a means of conferring commensurate freedom wherein no distinction is made between similar legal positions. The state may therefore take the measures it deems necessary to regulate a particular issue or to prevent an evil to which it deems it necessary to respond. The state’s implementation of the principle of equality may not be used as a cover for its desires, or a platform for its convictions on unjust situations which arouse ill will or hatred which transpose the controls on its behavior, or which arouse significant animosity to the power of its authority. Rather, its position when dealing with citizens must be just and it must not discriminate through imposition or despotism. Even though it is possible for the legislative authority to differ – in accordance with logical standards – from positions which are not delimited by fixed qualities, or which differ in terms of the principals on which they are based, the condition is that the differences between them must be real and not artificial or imaginary, since the principle of equality which does not contradict the contents thereof is upheld by that system which assesses the legislative division linking the legal texts of the system with the legitimate purposes to which it aspires. If it is proven that the texts are separated from their aims, and this distinction creates meaningless disorder, as if the connection between the method and the aim were illusionary, then the distinction shall be considered to rely upon unfounded events and shall not be legitimate in terms of the constitution. The essence of the principle of providing opportunities, which stems from the principle of equality and which is one of the elements thereof, is linked, in terms of the decision taken by this Court, to the opportunities which the State is entrusted to provide. The operations thereof will occur in the event of competition. The aim of constitutional protection for these opportunities is represented in the report of priorities determined in accordance with subjective principles necessitated by the common good. The referred text contains a deprivation barring a group of citizens from exercising their political rights, on the basis that they previously held the specified posts during the ten years prior to 11/2/2011, during the rule of the previous regime. These posts have been defined as “the President of the Republic, the Vice President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, or President or General Secretary of the dissolved National Democratic Party or member of its political office or general secretariat” exclusively, applicable only to those who held these posts during the aforementioned ten year period and not to anyone who held such posts before this period. The deprivation also applies to anyone who held a post similar in nature and responsibilities to those posts set out in the text during the specified period, such as the Deputy Prime Minister, ministers, assistant general secretaries of the dissolved National Party. The referred text thus contains an arbitrary discrimination which is not dependent on or justified by a subjective basis. It also adopts a legislative division